Case Docket

Summaries of our current and historical civil rights cases.

We have a rich history of litigating important civil rights cases on behalf of the most vulnerable in society. Our cases have smashed remnants of Jim Crow segregation; destroyed some of the nation’s most notorious white supremacist groups; and upheld the rights of minorities, children, women, the disabled and others who faced discrimination and exploitation. Many of our cases have changed institutional practices, stopped government or corporate abuses, and set precedents that helped thousands.

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Date Filed

July 01, 2019

After Florida voters overwhelmingly passed Amendment 4 in 2018, which restored the right to vote to over 1.4 million residents who had completed their sentences for felony convictions, the Legislature introduced and passed a law known as SB 7066, which requires people with past felony...

Date Filed

April 18, 2017

The founder of a major neo-Nazi website orchestrated a harassment campaign that relentlessly terrorized a Jewish woman and her family with anti-Semitic threats and messages. The Southern Poverty Law Center, along with its Montana co-counsel, filed suit in federal court on behalf of the woman,...

Date Filed

March 27, 2018

More than a century ago, Mississippi adopted a state constitution that was specifically intended to prevent freed slaves and their descendants from gaining political influence, in part by blocking their access to the ballot box. Today, a provision of that 1890 constitution – a lifetime voting...

Date Filed

February 21, 2019

On April 5, 2018, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with assistance from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Tennessee Highway Patrol, executed the largest workplace immigration raid in nearly a decade, detaining approximately 100 Latino workers at an east Tennessee meat...

Date Filed

June 17, 2014

The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) systemically puts the health and lives of prisoners at risk by ignoring their medical and mental health needs and discriminating against prisoners with disabilities – violations of federal law by a prison system that has one of the highest mortality rates in the country. The SPLC and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program (ADAP) filed suit to end the deplorable conditions in Alabama prisons.

Date Filed

July 16, 2019

As part of its ongoing war on the nation’s asylum system, the Trump administration declared migrants who travel through a third country before reaching the U.S.-Mexico border are ineligible for asylum. The SPLC filed a federal lawsuit challenging this most recent attempt to ban asylum.